Custard, I think, is responsible for bringing me here to you, as outlined by Emily Darlow. It’s a food that I’ve chased down for many years, trying to settle on a favourite recipe.
Custard is weirdly important to me. I grew up with it, and I believe it to be the ultimate comfort food. It is both luxurious and common, often super nostalgic, a very simple food but still a little tricky to make which is why we have the expression “turned to custard” meaning things have gone wrong or a plan has failed, like custard that has curdled disappointingly and conclusively.
In the pursuit of my custard vision I have baked it, poured it, topped it with sugar and set it on fire, churned it and frozen it as icecream, tried making it with custard powder, egg yolks, yolks plus whites and eventually settled on a creme patisserie or pastry cream, rather than a creme anglaise.No custard powder (sorry Mum.)
The best custard uses a small amount of cornflour and the whole egg, yolk and white. A creme anglaise, made using just the yolk, if you were being unkind could be said to lack body. It’s a lovely light custard (a custard sauce?), which is a perfect accompaniment to cake or pudding. Creme anglaise is runny and can hide a multitude of dry-cake sins, and is great served with fresh fruit or meringue or a tart. But we are not here for creme anglaise, we are here for custard, and for me that’s something rich and thick that has the capacity to hold its shape on a spoon and coat your mouth with velvety goodness.
We made this whole-egg custard commercially for many years at Buena Vista Farm, a row of Thermomixes making just a litre and a half each at a time, and we’d pack it in huge chest coolers on ice to take to the local farmers’ markets each week. Once a year at Christmas time we would mess with it and add brandy, but otherwise it was unchanged for many years. At the markets Adam, my husband, used to write a blackboard sign at the front of the stall that read ‘best custard in the world’, which perhaps, to be fair, should have said ‘best custard in our world’, but you know, semantics.
This custard can be served warm or cold, on its own or piped into tart cases or stirred through cooked brown rice which makes just about the best rice custard dessert on the planet – chewy, creamy, and absolutely perfectly satisfying.
This, below, is the volume I always make, and I use a Thermomix (not in any way sponsored).
750 ml (3 cups) full cream milk
250 ml (1 cup) fresh pouring cream
5 free-range eggs
170 g (3/4 cup) white sugar
2 tablespoons cornflour (cornstarch)
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract or Essence
Put all the ingredients, except the vanilla, into the bowl of the Thermomix. Mix on speed 7 for 5 seconds.
Cook on speed 4 at 90°C (295°F) for 8 ½ minutes. Add the vanilla at the end and mix on speed 4 for 3 seconds.
Spoon into containers or a jug. It will keep well in the fridge for 1 week.
For a brandy version, add 1 tablespoon brandy to this recipe at the end with the vanilla extract.
Here is a smaller volume version for everyone who doesn’t need a whole litre and a half of custard at a time, with stove-top instructions.
375 ml (2 cups) milk
125 ml (½ cup) fresh pouring cream
½ teaspoon Vanilla Extract or Essence
3 free-range eggs
85 g white sugar
1 tablespoon cornflour (cornstarch)
Put the milk, cream and vanilla into a saucepan and heat over a medium heat until just simmering, stirring regularly.
Meanwhile, in a large, heatproof bowl, whisk the eggs with the sugar until light and creamy and then whisk in the cornflour and combine thoroughly.
Next, very slowly pour the warm milk and cream into the egg mix bowl and whisk very well. Leave it for a second while you quickly wash the saucepan out, then pour the whole lot back into the clean saucepan and cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until thick. The moment it thickens (it’ll do it suddenly – and look kind of lumpy), take it off the heat and whisk, whisk, whisk. There’s enough residual heat to finish cooking for the next minute, and you make it silky smooth by whisking. Easy.
Keeps refrigerated for 1 week.
This is the custard of my childhood – a delicious, thick and pourable custard that calls for very unfashionable custard powder. It won’t split, you don’t have to hover with a whisk or a bowl of ice water, and it hits the spot of a custardy custard when custard is required and you have neither cream nor a surfeit of eggs.
Makes approx. 1 litre (4 cups)
2 tablespoons custard powder
60 gm / 4 tablespoons white sugar
1 litre (4 cups) full-cream milk
2 free-range eggs
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
In a saucepan, mix the custard powder with the sugar and 125 ml (½ cup) of the milk.
Add the eggs and whisk together well. Add the vanilla.
Whisk in the remaining milk and then set the saucepan over a low heat until it almost comes to the boil and thickens, stirring fairly constantly.
As soon as it really starts to thicken, give it a good whisk to keep it lovely and smooth.
Serve warm or cold. When it’s hot it’s pouring consistency, once it cools it will be the consistency of a thick yoghurt.
This keeps in the fridge, covered, for 1 week.
Recipe adapted from Fiona’s book “From Scratch” published by Hardie Grant 2022, photography by Alan Benson